Gaughan on Voting in Colonial and Revolutionary America @GaughanAnthonyJ @DrakeLawSchool

Anthony J. Gaughan, Drake University Law School, is publishing Voting in Colonial and Revolutionary America in the Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This chapter examines the history and practice of voting in colonial and Revolutionary America. When courts consult history for guidance in election law cases, judges and litigants usually focus on three time periods: the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, the adoption of the First Amendment in 1791, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. But many of the most important attributes of 21st century American election law trace back to election practices that predated the Constitution. During the 180 years between the founding of the Jamestown Colony in 1607 and the Constitutional Convention of 1787, American elections developed distinctive features that can still be found in state and federal elections in the United States. This chapter provides an overview of voting and democracy in the English colonies of North America as well as in the 13 states established during the American Revolution. A remarkable variety of voting systems characterized colonial and Revolutionary elections. The 3,000 miles of ocean that separated Britain from its American colonies—and the hundreds of miles of coastline that separated the colonies from one another—promoted the development of unique and diverse election features. Colonial legislatures developed a wide range of approaches to voter and candidate qualifications, voting methods, election scheduling, term lengths, and a host of other election laws and procedures. The decentralized nature of colonial elections remains a central feature of American election law. Nevertheless, some common themes emerged in early American elections. The voting process matured rapidly in the eighteenth century. Election rules and voting innovations that took hold in one colony often spread to others. Most important of all, the Americans developed a concept of representation that diverged sharply with that of the mother country. By the time the colonists declared their independence from Britain in 1776, a distinctively American approach to voting and elections had emerged in North America. This chapter is organized into four parts. The first describes the political framework in which the American colonies conducted elections in the 1600s and 1700s. The second section details the laws that governed suffrage rights in the colonies. The third explores the process of voting in colonial America. The final section examines how the Revolution influenced voting laws and practices in the new American states of the 1770s and 1780s.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.